Lan Wangji's Scars and John Watson's Grief-stache : Stories Light the Way Through Grief

I'm thinking about stories and grief. Stories, where we lose ourselves, see ourselves reflected, ponder alternatives, take warning or find inspiration... And grief. Well.

Grief. 

Wow. This is the year for it. 

For me, for my little family, sure. Grief is where we live. But not just me, not at all. 

Not with Coronavirus, the horseman of plague. How many dead in the US? In the World? I have to pause to look it up. 

560,000 in the US, and 3 million worldwide. This is a global grief.

The numbers are too big to even make sense of. What does that number look like, what is the scale? I remember the sinking dread I felt when I heard the predicted numbers. 300,000 people will be dead in the US? Unimaginable. I taped a poem to my mirror-- when despair for the world grows in me... Now the dire predications have all come true and been exceeded.

At a certain point, a few months into quarantine, I stopped watching the daily numbers climb. I'm ashamed to say that the deaths became real sparks of sadness and pain only as people died closer and closer to me-- people in facebook groups, then friends of friends, then parents of friends.  The wound of those deaths being politicized will leave a permanent scar on us. 

But even if we've escaped the immediate blast of death from coronavirus in our close circles this year, there are other sweeping losses. Other deaths, with isolated lonely funerals over zoom. Secondary losses-- mental illness, kids missing a year of school, friendships disintegrating, politics shredding families, isolation and loneliness. Health issues, job losses-- all of the micro cracks in the porcelain, all that damaged structrual integrity, it all gave out. Shit broke down. It sure did in my little family. 

A bunch of new storefronts are empty on the Main street of our town-- the fabric shop and the bike shop. Along the same main street, the homeless encampment is built up with tents and tarps and carboard barriers and homemade flag poles.

It's global, it's local, it's personal. Everyone I know is IN IT-- in the grief. In the deep, dark waters. 

The thing with deep grief water is... the visibility is terrible.

When you're in it, there's no sense of scale, no perspective. Are you adrift in the Atlantic ocean, or are you nearly to shore? Is there anyone else around, just over the crest of the next wave, or are you utterly alone? What's below? Is there worse yet to come? Is there any chance to leave these waters?

For the last few months, still in quarantine, when people ask how I am, my first thought is that I am underwater. I mean, I'm fine. I'm not drowning, I'm not dying. But the gasps of air I'm pulling are barely enough to keep me close to the surface. 

Looking at that sentence-- ye gads, it's horribly melodramatic. But that's the feeling. How can I get my head above water far enough to make a plan, to get perspective, to change direction? It's taking all of my energy to stay within breathing distance of the air.

The one thing I can focus on is stories. Shows, fandom, favorite books, fanfiction, fanart. That may sound escapist. Life is too brutal, so maybe fandom is where you can run and hide someplace softer.

But, it's not. I don't. 

I run and hide someplace-- some places-- much worse. Battles, deaths, supernatural evils, cosmic fights between good and evil-- epic wars between clans and nations. 

But those huge operatic-- Shakespearean-- Olympian-- conflicts-- they are like a magnifying glass, concentrating the ray of pain and grief into something clear and bright enough that I can... see it. Percieve it. 

It burns, absolutely. The grief and pain in the stories I devour-- it's really painful. My kids and I, we cry on the couch together-- big messy sobs, noisy weeping. Sackcloth and ashes. And lots of jokes too-- we make fun of ourselves for it-- but we cry real tears. Tears that are sometimes too hard to access when it's about our own losses. 

(The kids joke about their dad's suicide. And cry about Xiao XingChen's.)

This week I realized that grief is taking up about 70% of my mental processing power, all day, every day. Grief for the people who aren't here, in my family, because they've died. They're gone, forever, and nothing will ever fill that hole. My mom-- my kids' grandma. My husband, their dad. They will never know these people. It fucking hurts. 

But also. Grief for all the secondary losses. They are a cascade. It is too depressing to list in detail, but. Income. Companionship. Relationships with in-laws. Shared memories. Plans. Being known, being seen. 

It doesn't leave much bandwidth for other things. 

****

Here's what I'm thinking about. 

****

So Lan Wangji, also called Lan Zhan, or Hanguan-Jun-- this guy is on my mind. He's from a novel called Mo Dao Zu Shi and a show called The Untamed. 

When he was little, he was raised in a rigid sect by his strict uncle, nurtured by his older brother, and separated from his parents. His mother was a prisoner in her own home, and when he was small, she died. (She probably killed herself. It was an unspeakable death, in any case. Something heavy, shameful, bewildering.) 

He was little. He waited in the snow for her to come back, to open her door to him. And. She didn't.

His father was absent, hiding himself from his family, (Why? Shame? Grief? Heartbreak? Asceticism? Who knows, who cares. He left the care of his two sons to his brother.) And then he died too. 

Lan Wangji was always a serious child. After his mother died, he stopped speaking. When he had to, he used only the most spare and concise formal speech-- 4 characters at a time, like a classical Chinese text. Things -- her death, his father's absence-- didn't start making any more sense. But there were sect rules, and they were superimposed over his life, like commandments carved into a mountainside. 

Self-control. Self-sufficiency.  Rules. Punishment, when you violated rules.  (But not love. Because whatever that is, it leads to death. Mother and father, loved, hated, murdered, murderer-- who knows. Love and death and loss and isolation all stirred together into a terrifying chaotic mess. No-- better to just follow the rules. Wear your self-control like a ribbon across your mind. Just. Hold it together.)

When he was a teenager, he was already astonishingly accomplished. Famous. Still silent. Upright. Isolated. Brittle and cold. Excellent. Lonely.

Then he fell in love with somebody-- Wei Ying-- who disturbed the routine, showed the smallness of the rules, and laughed his way through Lan Wangji's self-control. He blazed with excellence and goodness. 

Then-- fate, war, politics-- it wasn't fair-- they were just kids. They made some mistakes but mostly they tried their best-- but Wei Ying fell apart-- and he fell. He died. 

Lan Wangji tried to help him, but Wei Ying pushed him away. Wei Ying died alone. He was amazing, a hero. But his death was painful, and early, and scary.

Lan Wanji's uncle said Wei Ying was evil. Lan Wangji had tried to protect him, and that was wrong. Lan Wangji would be punished. Brutally. He would be permanently damaged. Scarred. Wrecked.

Before, the balance of rules and punishment made sense. They kept disorder at bay. Inner and outer worlds could be controlled. 

But this was wrong-- it was wrong to be punished for helping the person he loved. And to be beaten so severely that he could not walk for years------

The rules carved on the mountainside, they were just words now. The sect-- the contract of loyalty, of mutual support-- that was broken. 

He was broken. He got blackout drunk, scarred himself-- made his body marred in the same way Wei Ying's had been. You can't touch the dead. But when he burnt himself, he shared Wei Ying's pain. He was changed-- his body was changed forever because of Wei Ying.

In a way it was freeing. Lan Wangji could do what he wanted. So he found Wei Ying's son, A-Yuan. And raised him, adopted him, made him his heir. He made a family out of the pieces Wei Ying left behind. 

He still couldn't talk. 

But he could play music, and feed the rabbits Wei Ying had left him, and teach his little boy how to be kind, and gentle, and excellent. He could love him, even if he hadn't been loved by his own father. He could open the door for his A-Yuan in a way nobody had opened the door for him. 

And he could love and miss Wei Ying. Stubbornly. He played his music for his spirit, every night. He reached out to him, trying to hear from him. Even as his body healed, imperfectly, he didn't forget and he didn't let go. 

He was stubborn and single minded and a little petty. He raised his son to be better than himself, hung onto his love, and went out into the world to solve problems. And he never stopped grieving, dressing like he was going to a funeral. 

He grieved, unforgetting, unrelenting, for over a decade. 

****

I'm tired of my own grief. It's been four years since Matt died. I'm tired of this. The facts of the matter don't change-- it's gotten boring. As a story, it's frighteningly like the aftermath of a side character. Get widowed, mourn, grow old and die. 
But, I suffer under the impression that I am the protagonist of my life. I don't want to just... grind out the rest of my days. I want to be good, to be brave. To make and keep my oaths, to do good in the world. I want to raise my kids to be better and braver and wiser and stronger than I am. 

****

I think I lied-- the stories I cling to ARE escapist. Because, Wei Ying comes back. Lan Wangji waited for him, grieved for him-- suffered. Changed, body and soul. 

And then, when Wei Ying resurrects, Lan Wangji is ready for him. He takes him home, and stands by him against the world, comes to understand the reasons behind his misstakes and choices in his past life, and then he marries him. 

All that grief-- he didn't expect to get a second chance to Wei Ying. But he did. 

It's a good story.

****

When BBC's Sherlock Holmes throws himself off of the hospital roof, John Watson grieves. 

He moves out of their apartment and cuts off his friends and drinks too much and grows a terrible moustache. He eventually finds a new partner, who he thinks will be different enough from Sherlock Holmes that his absence can't leak through and ruin his future. She's cute, and personable, and seems like she's not a calculating super genius. (She is. He has a type, whether he knows it or not.)

John grows a terrible moustache. What can you do? Nothing makes sense. Maybe try and be someone else, try and be someone that Sherlock never knew. A fresh start! A new self! A new life!

No, the past reexerts itself.

Sherlock comes back. Ta-daaa! he says, and then he's shocked when John beats him. (John is an idiot, who thinks that anger is the only way to express any and all human emotion). Sherlock is also an idiot, he doesn't understand how much his death, his suicide, totally wrecked John. He thinks it was an adventure, just a decision he made for his own reasons, nobody's business but his own, and that John wouldn't be that affected, or at least not for long. He'd get over it, surely.

For a genius, he is so stupid. As if John would ever be okay again. And even when Sherlock is back, and they are trying to be friends again, and John is getting married and expecting a baby-- the cracks still show. 

Sherlock killed himself. He left John, and hurt him, and lied to him.

John is broken. He had started to heal from his wartime misery, when he was with Sherlock before. But Sherlock had left him. He's dismantled. He's not okay. What they had before, it's broken beyond repair.

The reality dawns on Sherlock slowly. Maybe it would have been better if he HAD died. Or never come back. Never seen just how hurt John really was. 

They hurt each other more and more. It's not good, it's not okay. John beats Sherlock so badly he ends up in the hospital.

But...time passes. Things change, the edges dull. They come back together. They get better. They are a family. It's messed up, but it's solid. It's better. 

It is what it is. 

****

Sherlock comes back. The doctor comes back, with a new face. The Avatar, too. Even She-Ra.

Wei Ying comes back. He gets a second chance, and so does Lan Wangji. But that's not the part of the grief story that I love.

I love Lan Wangji, left behind, back beaten ragged, burned and scarred, caring for little A-Yuan. Remembering the songs he shared with his beloved. Stubbornly remembering, stubbornly lighting the world. 

It's not the hope of resurrection that is important to me in stories about grieving. It's the actual grieving. Harry Potter is wrecked after Sirius Black dies. Nobody can replace him. He needed him, but he left, and never came back. That grief continues, like real grief. Magic power, prophecy, top shelf wizard whiskey notwithstanding, loss is loss.

John Watson grieves badly-- breaks with the anger and horror of Sherlock's suicide. He's not okay. He makes weird choices. He gets all twisted up inside. 

I get it, Watson. I support your terrible grief-stache and terrifying choice in wives. 

Maybe that's what I'm trying to understand about grief and story, and why it's so important to me. Maybe it's that I'm trying to see where I am-- get a sounding in these deep waters. 

Maybe I can triangulate my experience in grief-country by seeing Wangji grieve. And beyond that, when other fans make art and wrote stories SEEING that grief as well... I can see my own. 

I don't know, these thoughts feel unformed and incoherent-- they're just bubbling up from this deep weird water. I just know that somehow, seeing Lan Wangji's grief is keeping me afloat.